“We have no time to waste,” said Conrad grimly. He grasped Meg around the waist and heaved her into the saddle.
“Hang on,” he said.
Daniel pranced a little, in a way of welcome to his rider.
Conrad spoke again. “Tiny, point,” he said.
The dog trotted down the trail, Conrad close behind him. Beauty took up her place, with Andrew trudging along beside her, thumping the ground with an energetic staff. Daniel and Duncan brought up the rear.
The enchantment deepened. The land became wilder than it had been before. Monstrous oaks grew in massive groves, the underbrush was denser, and about it all there was an unreality that made one wonder if the oaks and underbrush were really there, if the boulders had as thick a coat of lichens and the sense of antiquity that they seemed to have. But that was only a part of it. A brooding grimness held over everything. A deep hush pervaded the land, a bush of ominous and foreboding waiting, sinister and doomful.
If the oaks had only been monstrous oaks, if the underbrush had been no more than thick, if the boulders had been only ancient mounds of lichens, a man, Duncan thought, could have accepted it. But there was the warping of these ordinary things, the crookedness and bias of them, as if they were not permanently planted in the earth, but were only there for the moment, as if someone bad projected a picture of them and was as yet undecided what kind of picture he might want. It was a picture that wavered, as the reflection in a water surface might fluctuate with the almost imperceptible movement of the water, an oscillation, a shifting, a puzzling impermanence. And here and there one glimpsed at times the broken segments of shivering rainbow colors that Andrew had mentioned earlier, but that Duncan had not seen when he had looked for them. But now he did see them — the sort of shimmering color one saw when light shone through thick glass and its rays were scattered into a million hues. They appeared and disappeared, they did not last for long and never were they a complete rainbow arc, but fragments of arcs, shattered arcs, as if someone had taken a perfect rainbow and crushed it in his hands, shattering it, then broadcasting the fragments to the wind.
The valley still remained, and the hills that rose on each side of it. But the faint trail they had been following had disappeared, and now they made their way through the tangled forest as best they could. Conrad was holding Tiny close ahead of him, not allowing the dog the wide range that he had permitted before. Daniel was nervous, tossing his head and snorting every now and then.
“It’s all right, boy,” said Duncan, and Daniel answered with a quiet whicker.
Ahead of Duncan, Andrew stumped along beside Beauty, thumping his staff with unaccustomed force. Beauty minced beside him, staying close. Unaccountably, she seemed to have taken a fancy to this strange companion.
Perhaps she believed, thought Duncan, chuckling at the thought, that now she had acquired a human of her own, as Tiny had Conrad and Daniel had Duncan.
At the head of the column, Conrad and Tiny had stopped. The others came up to cluster with them.
“A swamp ahead,” said Conrad. “It blocks our way. Could this be the fen?”
“Not the fen,” said Andrew. “The fen does not block the way. It lies to one side and is open water.”
Through the trees the swamp could be seen, a spreading marshiness that was not open land, but choked by trees and other heavy growth.
“Perhaps it’s not deep,” said Duncan. “We may be able to make our way through it, keeping close to the hill.”
He moved ahead, Conrad striding beside him, the others trailing in their wake.
Duncan and Conrad stopped at the edge of the water.
“Looks deep to me,” said Conrad. “Some deep pools out there. More than likely mud. And the hill you speak of.
There isn’t any hill.”
What he said was correct. The line of hills they had been following now fell away and to their left, as well as toward their right, lay the tangled swamp.
“Stay here,” said Duncan.
He stepped into the water. At each step the water deepened, and beneath his feet he felt the squishiness of mud and slime. Before him lay the beginning of one of the pools that Conrad had called his attention to — black as the blackest ink, with a look of oil, of something heavier and more treacherous than water.
He shifted his course to skirt it, and as he did the inky blackness of the water boiled, lashed to fury by something that struggled to emerge from it. A sinuous back humped up and broke through the blackness of the pool. Duncan’s hand went to the sword hilt, half drew the blade. The sinuous back subsided and the water once more assumed its undisturbed oiliness. But in another pool a little farther on, the surface exploded in a froth of violence, and out of it shot a vicious head supported by a snakelike body that hurled itself erect, towering above the level of the pool. The head was triangular, not so large as might be expected from the size of the ropelike body. Two horns crowned the scaly head; the cheeks had the appearance of armor plate, pinching down to a beaklike snout. It opened its mouth, and the mouth was larger than the head. Cruel curved fangs projected from the jaws.
Duncan had the blade out by now and stood, holding it, ready for attack, but the attack did not come. Slowly, almost reluctantly, the body slid back into the pool and the head disappeared beneath the surface. The swamp lay quiet and black and menacing.
“I think you’d best come back,” said Conrad.
Slowly, step by careful step, Duncan backed out of the swamp.
“No chance to get across,” said Conrad.
Andrew came clumping down to where they stood, Beauty mincing along behind him.
“There is no swamp,” he said. “There never was a swamp. It is all enchantment.”
“Swamp or not,” said Meg, huddled on top of Daniel, “a bewitchment such as this can kill you.”
“Then what do we do?” asked Duncan.
“We try another route,” said Andrew. “We pass the enchantment by. No matter how powerful may be the ones who laid this witchery on us, they cannot lay it over everything. They knew where we were going and it was along that route that the enchantment was laid.”
“You mean into the hills,” said Duncan. “If we go there, how well do you know this land?”
“Not as well as this valley, but I know it. A few miles from here, due east, there is another trail. A bad trail. Very crooked, up and down the hills. Hard going. But it will take us south. It will take us beyond these hills that block us from the south.”
“I think,” said Meg, “we best had seek that trail.”
12
They found Andrew’s trail, but it proved to be the wrong trail. Halfway up a steep hillside it petered out to nothing.
They had left the enchantment far behind them, had escaped from it. Now there were no rainbow tints, no feeling that the landscape had been skewed. The land was the kind of land one would have expected to find. The oaks were honest oaks, the honest boulders had honest lichens on them, the stretches of underbrush were normal underbrush.
The feeling of gloom was gone, the foreboding had dropped away.
It had been hard work. There had been no level ground. Constantly they had been traveling steep slopes, or making their careful way down steep slopes, which in some cases was almost as exhausting as the climbing.
Now that the trail had finally disappeared, Duncan glanced up at the sky. The sun was almost at its zenith.
“Let us stop to eat and rest,” he said. “Then we’ll strike east and try to find the right trail.” He said to Andrew,